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Friday, April 25, 2014

Finding Jewels

I am not slinking through the lower
levels of McLan Docking Station, but this is mostly because I can’t
slink. Humans can: my projection fakes it, being a human male in his
twenties with muscles earned through work and the rough hands of a
mechanic who gets their hands dirty snapping inkages into place. I’m
under the projection, the real Dar, a transfer of my brain into a
non-human body after an accident. I’ve survived longer than most
transfers, my body a cylindrical shape on treads, limbs stored
inside my chassis, a viewscreen at the top with my projection-face
visible to interact with others when not using the projection.

I don’t have any actual weapons to
deal with people who decide the universe needs less transfers in it.
Orien and I almost have fights over that sometimes. Medic or not, he
thinks it is better to be armed; I have memories of what happens to
transfers with weapons. What people do to them. If I defend myself,
all people remember is a transfer killing humans, how some of the
early transfers that were little more than people thrust into
machines and sent to kill enemies of nations. I’d die, stories
would spread and things would be harder for the other transfers out.
Orien says he doubts other transfers feel the same way, but it’s
how I feel.

I’m
on my rest day. The Station insists we take those and Rodun – the
head of security – pointed out I’d been to less than ten percent
of the station in five years. Docking bays, quarters, meeting rooms.
I didn’t waste my time
pointing out that most of what McLan had to offer isn’t anything I
can use at all. Rodun
suggested I take in the lower decks. Without telling me why beyond
that ‘jewels exist in forgotten places’. Which was probably code,
though I had no idea what for.

The
lower decks exist between the engines that hold the docking station
in place and the vast chambers storing elements and solutions that
powered food replicators, chargers, and kept the station itself
existing. They’re small,
cramped and the cheapest places to live on the station. Eyes
watch, and other organs and sensors as well. People make sure I am
past them, continue about their business. I am almost certain this
isn’t what Rodun meant by ‘jewels’ but I don’t much care. I
find hallways I can get down easily, slip through accessways. Make a
point of noting anything that needs to be fixed and sending flagged
messages to the maintenance crew. Partly because the idea of not
doing so is wrong, and also because it will make Rodun twitch a
little.

The
person who ends up following
me isn’t trying to hide; I
find
an empty corridor to wait in that
has two exists from it. The
follower is female, wearing a stitched-together stealth mesh. It
takes her ten seconds to round the corner, and in that time I do a
deeper scan, filtering out
the stealth mesh and trying to make sense of energy patterns.
Technically it’s not possible to filter out steath meshes entirely,
or to scan someone at the genetic level due to protection laws; I’ve
had a lot of free time on my hands over the years and paranoia breeds
useful skills.

I poke
the infoweb carefully, framing queries and sneaking searches in under
them. Her
name is Brin; biologically
and legally sixteen. One
parental unit, deceased; stowaway turned scavenger
on McLan, born with a genetic
splice to disrupt energy. Uncommon but not illegal; she has it
spliced into her at least a dozen times, with other traits and
splices designed to allow her to survive using it. And enough of a
field stored inside her to disrupt an entire spaceship if she had to.

Brin
stops as she rounds the corner, blinking at me under the hood. She
looks ordinary enough: short dark hair, no obvious traits visible on
her skin or under it, no weapons close at hand. Not that she needs
any. “You’re with
maintenance?” she asks, soft, keeping an eye out for anyone else.

I
don’t move. “I’m a mechanic. I was told I needed to see more of
the station. I can get them a
message, if you want?”

Brin
studies me, eyes narrowing. I have no idea what she can see, or what
she knows about me in turn. “I want to know why you’re using a
projection, if you are really a mechanic,” she snaps.

I
consider options, then kill
the projection. She jumps back half a step, eyes wide. “A-a
transfer?”

“My name is Dar.
And yes.”

“I should-should
go,” she stammers. “I could hurt you.”

I smile in the
viewscreen. “You could tell me what you wanted first?”

She shakes her
head, scrambles back further.

“I
don’t mean you harm, Brin,” I say, and her eyes widen further.
She hasn’t told me her name, and fear washes through her. Followed
by the disruption field
lashing out from within, killing
ever power source for three
corridors. Even
emergency systems. Lights die, Life
support shuts
down. Gravity fails.

I
extend grips from my treads, digging into the floor, and move toward
her as Brin
bobs in the air, clearly taken aback by what happened. I doubt she’s
ever cut loose before without thinking if only because shutting off
life support in an area you are in is foolish.
I extend a limb into the wall as the last of the disruption field
dissipates,
drain a few of my power cells
to jumpstart repair modules
in the walls.

Brin hits the
ground with a surprised sound, gulps in air and shivers against the
cold. She stands as I move closer, but doesn’t try another
disruption. Or to run.

“We shield
ourselves against EMPs of any kind, even to your extremes, or I would
be dead. And I scanned and looked you up on the infoweb as you
rounded the corner, before you ask.”

“But I have a
stealth mesh,” she says in a small voice.

“I have a lot of
free time on my limbs.” I extend three, wriggle them, pull them
back into my chassis. “And I didn’t survive as long as I have
without being cautious. And careful.”

“But if you
scanned me. I can disrupt more than just that,” Brin says. “Maybe
strong enough to kill you.”

“Careful is also
boring; I’ve been informed I need to be less boring.”

“But if people
realized what you are,” the girl says slowly, “they’d destroy
you.”

“People
aren’t that scared
of transfers anymore,” I snap, feeling more than a little miffed.

Brin just looks
confused. “That’s not – that has nothing to do with it. I’d
be set for years if I sold you for parts. Scrap dealers would pay a
small fortune for even half the apps you must have inside your body.”

I
blink in turn, rather glad I don’t have my projection on. “I
never thought of it that way.”

“You’re really
lucky I found you then.”

I turn my body in a
slow circle to take in emergency lighting, the distant sounds of
systems grinding back to life. “I am, am I?”

Brin flushes at
that and says nothing.

I stop in front of
her. “You could tell me why you wanted maintenance now.”

“I’m
a stowaway,” she whispers. I say nothing. “I can break things.
But I can see
breaking things, too. Leaks in systems, energies off-kilter. I could
help maintenance fix things.” She
looks away. “I’m a weapon and I don’t want to be just that, no
matter how stupid that sounds.”

I skim the infoweb,
hunting public data quickly, send a few requests to relevant parties.
There are a few protests – mostly because I am very good at my job
– but perhaps not as many as my ego would like. I ignore that, turn
my projection back on and extend a hand from it, placing a limb into
it and reaching down to squeeze one of her hands.

“I’m working in
maintenance as of four seconds ago and I could use someone who knows
the underbelly of the ship to help me. The security chief owes me at
least one favour for sending me to find ‘jewels’ and giving you
clearance will be it. All right?”

“What?”

“We are not
slaves,” I say quietly, “not to our own splices, traits or
skills. Not even to fate.”

She licks her lips,
then nods, squeezes my limb and follows me down the corridor. “Is
it okay if I call you Dar?”

“It is my name.
So yes.”

She ignores that.
“Thank you? For being a jewel, too?”

“Pardon?”

“For being nice,
when you didn’t have to be at all. To me?”

I continue
forward slowly, wondering what kind of jewels Rodun had intended me
to find, if he’d known Brin was here all along. I doubt the
security chief will ever tell me, but I have an ally who can disrupt
systems and I might be able to make his life quite interesting the
next time he tries to trick me. All in all a very good
rest day; with luck they won't make me take one again for some time.

A collection of miscellany

Condoms will break, but I can assure you that vows of abstinence will break more easily than condoms.

- Dr. Joycelyn Elders

In fantasy, impossible things exist. In science fiction, impossible things exist and can be understood by humans. In supernatural horror, impossible things exist and cannot live in peace with humans.

- Will Shetterly

We are living in a time when you can believe anything, as long as you do not claim it to be true.

- Ravi Zacharia

Religion teaches the dangerous nonsense that death is not the end.

- Richard Dawkins

In the time of harmony the golden age is not in the past, it is in the future

- Paul Signac

"No" is the wildest word in the English language.

- Emily Dickinson

The middle ground between genuinely true and outright faking is unconscious delusion.

- Dean Radin

“You have to surrender to your mediocrity, and just write. Because it’s hard, really hard, to write even a crappy book. But it’s better to write a book that kind of sucks rather than no book at all, as you wait around to magically become Faulkner. No one is going to write your book for you and you can’t write anybody’s book but your own.”